Police are investigating a 90-year-old man's complaint against an expatriate family that gave him their 14-year-old daughter's hand in an illegal marriage before disappearing with the girl on the wedding night. Nonagenarian Abu Bandar said he paid a dowry of SR30,000, bought a number of expensive gifts and splashed out on a SR50,000 wedding party. The girl's family attended the wedding, he said, but his wife-to-be did not. The family reportedly delayed bringing the girl, until Abu Bandar realized that “the whole night was bogus”. Abu Bandar said he officially married the girl through a matchmaker in the presence of witnesses and guests before the actual wedding ceremony itself. Police say, however, that Abu Bandar did not comply with Interior Ministry rules concerning marrying foreigners as he had failed to seek ministerial approval, and the official brought in by the girl's family to conduct the ceremony was not legitimate. Police are seeking the family and the matchmaker, but say that Abu Bandar has no information with which he can locate them. Human rights activists and several scholars have recently come out strongly against child marriages in the Kingdom. Human rights groups have urged the authorities to stop such practice once for all. They claimed that such marriages are performed more often than not due to the poor economic conditions of the family of the girl.
